My favourite being Medusa, closely followed by Aphrodite.
Aphrodite, if you are not aware, is the Greek goddess of love, beauty, pleasure, and procreation. There are various different versions of how she came to be. I personally like the idea of her arising from the sea foam (after Cronus castrated Uranus and tossed his severed genitals into the sea. Nice hey?!)
I was really excited when I saw that a couple of excursions on our holiday to Cyprus included a visit to the Baths of Aphrodite and to Aphrodite's Rock.
We booked ourselves on a Land Rover Adventure day, basically getting a tour of particular places on the island in a 4x4 rather than on a coach. We were lucky in that we were the only people booked in our Land Rover so we had our very own VIP treatment almost and had the driver all to ourselves.
We visited so many wonderful, beautiful places, one of which was the Baths of Aphrodite. Having read that the water can make you more youthful and beautiful if you bathe in it (which isn't actually possible) or splash it on your face.
Our guide, Akis, was so informative about the stories involving Aphrodite and answered my questions and talked about the area and the site.
He informed me that the water doesn't necessarily make you more beautiful on the outside, but more so on the inside.
I felt oddly emotional as we walked towards the pool, and felt my eyes well up with tears...which was strange as our tour guide then told us, without turning round to see me, that it is said that the water here is Aphrodite's tears for her lover Adonis.
As we walked back to the Land Rover I made sure I was at the back of our walking convoy, and took some of the water in my hands and lightly soaked some into my face. I can't say it's made me look or feel more beautiful, but it felt like it was the right thing to do due to tradition and myth. And it was really quite refreshing.
As we got back to the car I looked over at the views of coastline and at the landscape surrounding us and just felt so at peace and so relaxed. I also felt like a dream of mine had come true.
As a little girl, being so into Greek Mythology and still harbouring some of that excitement, this really was a dream excursion for me.
Which the next day was set to be even better.
